Career Compass (CC) is a web application that collects information from STEM students and professionals. Its purpose is to determine a participant’s (future) professional identity based on questions that are structured in five categories. These categories consist of the participant’s goals, values, personality, competencies, and interests. When the participant answers these questions, they will receive personalized feedback about their personality and profile —which helps them understand how and why they align with a technical profession. You can read more about the purpose and use of Career Compass on the website of the research team.
Features
CC offers both a frontend (what the user sees) and backend (what the researcher sees) that are continuously developed. Feature wise CC is in a stable release and in addition to its core features offers:
- User-friendly backend for researchers
- Responsive and highly user-friendly frontend for participants
- Secure data storage on the UT network
- Interactive feedback based upon participant’s answers
CC Tutorials
Here you can find the tutorials and more information on how to use CC.
CC FAQ
Here you can find the most frequently asked questions and their answers.
CC Troubleshooting
Running into trouble, fill in the form to get into contact with us.
How can I use Career Compass in my study?
1. Go to https://bmslab.utwente.nl/get-started/
2. Sign-up your a new project or Reserve for an Existing one;
Note: You need ethical approval before using Career Compass
3. Fill in the form
- Go to the reservation page to reserve the Career Compass tool
- In the menu on the left side, click on “Software”
- Add “CareerCompass” to your cart
- Using your UT account, register an account on the “BMS lab dashboard” (backend/management of the software)
Note: The dashboard is used to edit and create studies that then become available to participants in the CC web application.
- Wait for the BMS Lab approval. This takes place during the first opportunity (Tuesday or Thursday).
Note: You should only use Career Compass after consulting the “Bridge the gap” research group or the BMS lab before using Career Compass. Their research is the basis of Career Compass. Moreover, it is important to have a dataset to compare your participant’s answers to. The research group could help you with that.
Student theses
- Pastoor, G.H. (2020) Improving the visualization of the Career Compass tool.
- Pastoor, G.H. (2022) Examining the effectiveness and impact of providing feedback to develop the Professional Identity of (future) STEM professionals.
- Maas, B.H.M. (2022) The effect of team diversity on performance and the role of team inclusion on this relationship.
- Bergsma, Shannen (2020) How to motivate Dutch higher education students for personal development in order to reach their maximum potential? : An online experiment on best possible selves, the interpersonal and intrapersonal approach, and the moderating effect of competitiveness.
- Wijma, Esther (2020) The effect of a personalized utility-value intervention on STEM students’ interest in their study and identification with their study.
- Rees, M.R. van (2020) A professional identity intervention to take advantage from the diversity within technical student project teams.
- Smidt, M. (2020) The design and development of a feedback tool on professional identity for STEM professionals. (no link available)
- Vos, M. de (2017) Developing a feedback tool to gain insights into the professional identity of STEM students.
- Hul, L. van ‘t (2017) Who am I as a Technical Physician? The professional identity of young professionals in an emerging field : An exploratory study into professional identity as a predictor of intended career choice and career development.
- Berg, D.M.J.S. ten (2016) Keeping the ‘older’ engineer engaged at work.
- Möwes, R.A. (2016) The career compass : discovering diversity in STEM students’ professional identity and its effects on their intended career choice.